COLLISION-AVOIDANCE USING POTENTIAL FIELDS

Control of manipulator collision avoidance by using computer-aided pot ential field method is studied. A repulsive force is artificially crea ted using the distances between the robot links and obstacles, which a re generated by a distance computation algorithm. Typical approaches f or definition of link coordinate frames and kinematics computations ar e adopted. Control gains in the potential field control model are sele cted with respect to the ranges of the angular velocity and angular ac celeration of an industrial robot. Results on collision detection and collision avoidance control are presented. Using a high-speed personal computer, real-time manipulator control was achieved. From the result s, changing repulsive force gain can change the safety distance. This makes the safety zone adjustable and provides greater intelligence for robotic tasks under the ever-changing environment.